As a coach what do you do about your own ego and personality?

The first thing for us to do as coaches is to recognise that we have one and to guard against letting it get in the way of our objectivity, focus of attention, or support for our coaching subject. We are there for their benefit and not for ours!

The danger signs are - if we find ourselves telling anecdotes from our experience which have little or no relevance let alone benefit for the coachee and their agenda or circumstances. If we find that we are drifting off mentally and thinking our own thoughts, rather than focusing on the coachee’s issues and environment then we have our attention in the wrong place. This can happen to us quite unwittingly and we need to be on our guard to watch out for it. If we find ourselves judging the person, wondering how they could possibly have got themselves into such a situation and why on earth they cannot just do the simple thing that we would do to solve their problem or resolve their situation, then we are thinking more about ourselves than about them.

It is equally dangerous if we over-empathise with them and their situation and as a result lose our objectivity and ability to challenge them and their thinking. If our empathy extends too far and if we fins ourselves being overly sympathetic then the chances are that we are identifying too much with their situation. We need to check that we are standing alongside the person that we are coaching and helping them as an equal rather than treating them as a “controlling parent” might, as described in Eric Berne’s excellent work on Transactional Analysis.

Another question to ask ourselves is “why are we doing this work as a coach”?

Now I realise that there are a number of answers to this related to earning a living and to it being a natural career step from where we were before. However if we are embarking on this coaching work for personal status, position and to look big and superior in the eyes of our peers and coaching subjects then I suggest that we may going into it for the wrong reasons.
Of course we need to acknowledge and understand that we do all have our own egos to attend to and deal with – but as long as we recognise this and find other areas of our lives where they can be massaged and put first then we should be able to maintain the focus of our coaching work on the right person, the coachee and not on ourselves.